Re: [boost] Re: Formal review of "Output Formatters" library beginstoday

From: Vladimir Prus (ghost_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-09-28 01:58:35

Hi Jonathan,

> >  > II. A system for allowing user-defined type to advertise their
> >  > internal
> > >
> > > structure, ......

> > Isn't this close to using 'serialize' for extracting members, that I
> > advocate?
>
> Could you repeat how this would work?  I considered allowing user defined
> types to provide a function (member or non-member) which returns a list of
> members for use in serialization; unfortunately this was very wastefull in
> the (common) case that you don;t need to use all the information

I though the system will just work by providing an object with overloaded 
operator&:

   class outputter {
 public:
        template<class T>
 outputter& operator&(const boost::nvp<T>& nvp)
        { 
  cout << nvp.name() << ":" << nvp.value() << "\n"; 
         }
    };

    class my {
 template<.....>
        void serialize(Archive& ar......) { ar & BOOST_SERIALIZATION_NVP(i); }
         int i;
     };

Why do you think it's common to don't need all the information? Yes, you 
probably don't need names for many formatters, but then the operator& will be 
inline and compiler can optimize passing of the name.

- Volodya